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Uffdha! That was nuts....
2 weeks ago I was looking forward to our trip to the KWHSS in Pittsburgh with the BFF. I had done well and packed almost everything/staged it on Wednesday so I could leisurely figure out what carry-on I was taking on Thursday night and then get a good nights sleep before the 514am flight.
But....a certain Duke, wished us luck on flying.....he jinxed our travel through and through.
So, Thursday I'm just getting out of the car and I get a text that our flight was cancelled and we had been rebooked on an 11 AM flight which would put us in Pittsburgh at 11pm....completely missing the opening reception at The Castle .
We really wanted to see that and so we got flights out of Phoenix and left Thursday evening to stay with Sir Cathal and Baroness Genevieve so we could get to the airport without leaving at O-dark 30 from Tucson 2 hours away. It was nice, we made good time and then went straight to bed. Genevieve is a pastry chef for an awesome French Patisserie so we didn't see her since she had already left for work but we got going and dropped off and then had to wait in an epic line to finish checking baggage. The American area of the phoenix airport is under construction and it was a long line but we got to our gate with enough time to get coffeeeeeeeee and food and run across Master Paul fitz Denis the Caid Principal herald. So the trip was good after we got going. The flight out was long but nice. We got our baggage where I ran into a coworker on vacation (WTF???) and then we caught and Uber to the hotel.
We arrived at the hotel and were immediately hugged by folks that knew Ari and then I got accosted by the Exchequer for the event since I knew her ( THLady Hara Kikumatsu) from when she and a chunck of Aethelmearc camped with Hrafhnheim 4 years ago. Plus the Autocrat (Master Alaric MacConnal) was part of the crew and the Baroness ( Hilderun Hugelmann) of the BMDL was as well but I didn't know she was Baroness which is a funny story I will tell later in the post.
We got to our room, hung things up and then changed into SCA clothes with all of the bling and headed down to catch a shuttle to the Castle. Wow, what a cool Place. There were a lot of people and Ari and I did not go on any of the official tours but we walked around and saw all 3 floors and then up on the parapets of the roof. Its really neat. See the pictures in the album I'm posting at the end.
We got back and then hung out in the bar with folks. Met up with Megan and Herveus and I found the most awesome fabric for Coronation. It's red and white and wool and swirly and pretty and I bought all of it. Plus I got some colors for my tablet weaving and it was nice. We closed down the bar (cause that is what Atenveldters do when we go to the East coast and then we headed to bed.
Saturday was classes after we caught breakfast. We were a bit bleary eyed but all good. I took a class on the Mare Calligrapha Flourishes which I now want to immediately put into effect. I took a Russian Calligraphy and Illumination design course by a wonderful lady named Lady Lada from the East. She's a native speaker and her take on things was very unique and fresh. I believe it was her first time teaching and she did really well. I learned some really cool things in the calligraphy portion and we had a gal who spoke Checzch and that helped with the Church Slovanic that you see. Very cool.
I also took a class on Scribal Culture and how to Drive it. Looks like other kingdoms have issues with scribes and production and culture and acceptance. You could easily see the differences and the culture shock with some things. I took good notes which I need to go back to but I think we do okay in Atenveldt. I think we could do better on teh teaching the history part versus the "this is how we do it" but I think we are okay. Lots to ponder. I hung out in the Scribal Library talking shop with Lady Rivka and gal who I remember from Midrelam but whose moved all over and she's an old herald and scribe and whose name escapes me. Sighs. I also ran into Loosecannon aka Mistress Aesa, which was awesome. Also hung out in the Con Suite with some knitters, one of which I had drug to a yarn store at the last KWHSS and I had to show off the pictures of my birthday shawl to. :)
The herald from Drachenwald was already sharing G&Ts and we had a really tasty one before we finished some shopping at John Neal Booksellers and White Wolf and Phoenix. It was time for court and this is where I had a dumb. Seriously. I'd talked with Hilde the entire event. She was wearing a coronet (NBD, there are a lot of hats) and she handled court stuff like she did before for TRM Aethelmearc. I thought nothing of it until she lined up with her husband and their matching heraldic cotehardies and went in as the B&B of BMDL. Head desk. I'm dumb. We talked later and had a good laugh and her comment was "yup, pelican's do that". LOL.
Court was good. They did awards, the Laurel and Pelican Sovereign of Arms had presentations and then I handed out gifties and largess and spoke about hospitality. I was told later I spoke very eloquently which was nice. :)
Then we put things away and got prime rib dinner with Padre in the hotel restaurant. We beat the rush and the food and company was good. Got Padre hooked on Yuenling which was AWESOME!
Then we got our knitting and sat down for the evening entertainment of the BMDL Choir and their I Genisii, the “Greatest Comedia dell’Arte Troupe in the Known World”! It was World Wide Knit in Public but we all just hung out in court and knit. The entertainment was nice. The Comedia troupe had a last minute change due to a main player being sick and they had fun. There was a section where they did "whose line is it anyways" and they handed out paper and pens for random lines. I just kept writing and there was much laughing and it was a riot. When then finished up there and headed to the bar to drink some more and then got invited to the Staff Party and hung out until they closed the bar/room and the snacks were really good. We collapsed into bed very happy and tipsy and that was good.
I woke up fast on Sunday and got my stuff all packed up so I could attend the classes/talks in the am. Had a tasty breakfast and then into Scribal Roundtable which was again enlightening. The main item of contention was working with careless, not clued in crowns. Which seemed to be an all over thing. But again I took good notes and then had to leave before the roundtable ended to get checked out and on our way to The Church Brew works
That was good food, awesome atmosphere and really good beer. Wow. We then got a leisurely Uber to the airport, checked in, used the secret squirrel security entrance and then did a bit of shopping. I lost money in a book kiosk (but they are sending me the book after I called them yay!) and bought stuff for Benton. We got to our flight and got on the airplane just as a thunderstorm had hit. This was a storm that had done havoc in Chicago and Indianapolis. It was bad but mostly the lightening for ground crew so we couldn't push off from the gate. During the 45 mins we were in the aircraft something must have happened and the APU blew. Now its not needed in flight but the pilot was being cautious and had us all deplane. We sat around for about and hour until they said the plane was dead and we were rescheduled until 1040pm (our plane was supposed to leave at 544pm EST). Sighs. We hoofed it to Iron Chef Mike Symon's restaurant and got a seat and they closed the place around us.
The commented that they were there to serve and we didn't need to rush so we ate our fill (burgers and salad and beer) and then they asked if we wanted "BEER TO GO!". We said yes please. So drinking our beers we walked down the concourse to where everyone was gathered. All of teh babies were happy and getting into jammies so cute! We all shuffled on to our flight at just after 10 pm and we were in the air. Now the nice thing about flying over the continent is that we got an Airbus which had plug ins for phones and had inflight entertainment with ALL OF THE MARVEL MOVIES!!! So I snuggled in for Winter Soldier and then almost all of the way through Black Panther. I dozed in and out of the movies and was glad when we touched down in Phoenix 4 hours later. It was 1145pm and we all exited and Ari and I hit the bathroom before attempting to exit the terminal. I say attempting since we couldn't since the Phoenix Police had it cordoned off. Research later showed me nothing but something happened and we all had to stand around for about 20 minutes (passengers and airport employees and all) before they got buses routed to take us to baggage claim. We all trudged back to the opposite end of the terminal, exited onto the tarmac and then off to buses that we were packed in as sardines. Then finally around to the baggage claim where airport/airline personnel were watching the luggage that had been sitting there for over an hour. We finally get our bags and meet Sir Cathal on the curb at 115am. Get to his house, transfer luggage to Ari's car and get the heck out of Phoenix. I got home a bit after 3ish and then into bed by 330am. UGH.
Pictures from the event:
To say that was the end of my "exciting times" for the week would be an understatement. I slept and was groggy Monday and couldn't work from home since key hardware pieces were still at work or locked in my car which was with DH at his location. Without said key hardware I really couldn't show up at DH's plantsite to get my stuff. Sighs. So I did laundry, put things away, picked up the little boy from camp, made dinner and rested. The whole day to myself was actually good cause being Queen Ian'ka for 3 days straight without a lot of being not Queen was good.
The rest of the week was a scramble and then we had a supplier issue that ground my work to a halt for 12 hours of work time. This was a major issue and well, there are consequences for our supplier and now we have more procedures to handle things that the supplier was well versed in to start with. To add to that we had other major issues (failing hardware) and my deputy was gone and that left me and our new guy. Sighs. Plus, I had to deal with a guy who does everything in his power to not do his job and having to deal with that which is also a hot issue I was totatly crispy by the time Friday rolled around. I was so fragile it took effort to get out of my car in the parking lot and mentally I was panicking. But good people and awesome coworkers and everything worked out okay. I got hugs from a few folks and honestly that helped.
So Friday we took things easy, I got a 1.5 hour massage and that did more awesome for my mood. Saturday we got up, got going and out the door by 9am to get to Twin Moons Investiture. The day was great. We had a really good time. The courts were a bit long (not ours) but the awards were good from the Barony. Just before we invested the new B&B we had some fun with a peerage offer. Ivan handled it and we called up Iona and he talked about her hospitality and how even if we didn't have a ME dance community, she'd make one and be successful at it. He commented that "and this is peerlike." The audience gasped and our herald called forth the Laurels and she was clueless for about 30 seconds and then the light bulb hit. It was awesome. The rest of the investiture court was good. The funniest two things were a rap ala Vanilla Ice for the final lead in for the stepping down folks and the new Baroness who is a metal caster giving her Largess Coordinators a pair of cast bronze "LARGE "S"'s. I'm still cracking up on that pun.
We got out of site with plenty of time since there was a hard deadline of 5pm and we had dinner at Uncle Bear Brewing and then home. We were home in less than 12 hours which never happens. YAY!
Sunday I felt like crap and read/slept most of the day. Benton and I let Mel sleep in and got him coffee and his father's day stuff. Then he made us waffles but yeah, most of the day I was meh. I got my armor all conditioned up for Tuesday and then Monday night we had to build a new leg piece.
Monday was weird at work and I'm still trying recover from all of the weird. I got such a bad headache I just went home, cleaned up the house for scribble (the boys had done a ton so it was my personal pickup and put away) and then mel and I worked on my leg armor.
Tuesday night after a very stressful day of work I left and got martial arts stuff for Benton (cup and pads), picked him up at martial arts and then home to dinner, change and get ready for fighter practice for the whole family. But we did it and off we went. I was nervous. I'm out of shape and much heavier than 15 months ago when I last put on armor but I did it. The new leg piece worked okay but I need to suspend it differently and I have and idea for that. Benton did okay as well and his armor needs some work but he's looking good. Got changes to make but I think we can manage. All good.
But....a certain Duke, wished us luck on flying.....he jinxed our travel through and through.
So, Thursday I'm just getting out of the car and I get a text that our flight was cancelled and we had been rebooked on an 11 AM flight which would put us in Pittsburgh at 11pm....completely missing the opening reception at The Castle .
We really wanted to see that and so we got flights out of Phoenix and left Thursday evening to stay with Sir Cathal and Baroness Genevieve so we could get to the airport without leaving at O-dark 30 from Tucson 2 hours away. It was nice, we made good time and then went straight to bed. Genevieve is a pastry chef for an awesome French Patisserie so we didn't see her since she had already left for work but we got going and dropped off and then had to wait in an epic line to finish checking baggage. The American area of the phoenix airport is under construction and it was a long line but we got to our gate with enough time to get coffeeeeeeeee and food and run across Master Paul fitz Denis the Caid Principal herald. So the trip was good after we got going. The flight out was long but nice. We got our baggage where I ran into a coworker on vacation (WTF???) and then we caught and Uber to the hotel.
We arrived at the hotel and were immediately hugged by folks that knew Ari and then I got accosted by the Exchequer for the event since I knew her ( THLady Hara Kikumatsu) from when she and a chunck of Aethelmearc camped with Hrafhnheim 4 years ago. Plus the Autocrat (Master Alaric MacConnal) was part of the crew and the Baroness ( Hilderun Hugelmann) of the BMDL was as well but I didn't know she was Baroness which is a funny story I will tell later in the post.
We got to our room, hung things up and then changed into SCA clothes with all of the bling and headed down to catch a shuttle to the Castle. Wow, what a cool Place. There were a lot of people and Ari and I did not go on any of the official tours but we walked around and saw all 3 floors and then up on the parapets of the roof. Its really neat. See the pictures in the album I'm posting at the end.
We got back and then hung out in the bar with folks. Met up with Megan and Herveus and I found the most awesome fabric for Coronation. It's red and white and wool and swirly and pretty and I bought all of it. Plus I got some colors for my tablet weaving and it was nice. We closed down the bar (cause that is what Atenveldters do when we go to the East coast and then we headed to bed.
Saturday was classes after we caught breakfast. We were a bit bleary eyed but all good. I took a class on the Mare Calligrapha Flourishes which I now want to immediately put into effect. I took a Russian Calligraphy and Illumination design course by a wonderful lady named Lady Lada from the East. She's a native speaker and her take on things was very unique and fresh. I believe it was her first time teaching and she did really well. I learned some really cool things in the calligraphy portion and we had a gal who spoke Checzch and that helped with the Church Slovanic that you see. Very cool.
I also took a class on Scribal Culture and how to Drive it. Looks like other kingdoms have issues with scribes and production and culture and acceptance. You could easily see the differences and the culture shock with some things. I took good notes which I need to go back to but I think we do okay in Atenveldt. I think we could do better on teh teaching the history part versus the "this is how we do it" but I think we are okay. Lots to ponder. I hung out in the Scribal Library talking shop with Lady Rivka and gal who I remember from Midrelam but whose moved all over and she's an old herald and scribe and whose name escapes me. Sighs. I also ran into Loosecannon aka Mistress Aesa, which was awesome. Also hung out in the Con Suite with some knitters, one of which I had drug to a yarn store at the last KWHSS and I had to show off the pictures of my birthday shawl to. :)
The herald from Drachenwald was already sharing G&Ts and we had a really tasty one before we finished some shopping at John Neal Booksellers and White Wolf and Phoenix. It was time for court and this is where I had a dumb. Seriously. I'd talked with Hilde the entire event. She was wearing a coronet (NBD, there are a lot of hats) and she handled court stuff like she did before for TRM Aethelmearc. I thought nothing of it until she lined up with her husband and their matching heraldic cotehardies and went in as the B&B of BMDL. Head desk. I'm dumb. We talked later and had a good laugh and her comment was "yup, pelican's do that". LOL.
Court was good. They did awards, the Laurel and Pelican Sovereign of Arms had presentations and then I handed out gifties and largess and spoke about hospitality. I was told later I spoke very eloquently which was nice. :)
Then we put things away and got prime rib dinner with Padre in the hotel restaurant. We beat the rush and the food and company was good. Got Padre hooked on Yuenling which was AWESOME!
Then we got our knitting and sat down for the evening entertainment of the BMDL Choir and their I Genisii, the “Greatest Comedia dell’Arte Troupe in the Known World”! It was World Wide Knit in Public but we all just hung out in court and knit. The entertainment was nice. The Comedia troupe had a last minute change due to a main player being sick and they had fun. There was a section where they did "whose line is it anyways" and they handed out paper and pens for random lines. I just kept writing and there was much laughing and it was a riot. When then finished up there and headed to the bar to drink some more and then got invited to the Staff Party and hung out until they closed the bar/room and the snacks were really good. We collapsed into bed very happy and tipsy and that was good.
I woke up fast on Sunday and got my stuff all packed up so I could attend the classes/talks in the am. Had a tasty breakfast and then into Scribal Roundtable which was again enlightening. The main item of contention was working with careless, not clued in crowns. Which seemed to be an all over thing. But again I took good notes and then had to leave before the roundtable ended to get checked out and on our way to The Church Brew works
That was good food, awesome atmosphere and really good beer. Wow. We then got a leisurely Uber to the airport, checked in, used the secret squirrel security entrance and then did a bit of shopping. I lost money in a book kiosk (but they are sending me the book after I called them yay!) and bought stuff for Benton. We got to our flight and got on the airplane just as a thunderstorm had hit. This was a storm that had done havoc in Chicago and Indianapolis. It was bad but mostly the lightening for ground crew so we couldn't push off from the gate. During the 45 mins we were in the aircraft something must have happened and the APU blew. Now its not needed in flight but the pilot was being cautious and had us all deplane. We sat around for about and hour until they said the plane was dead and we were rescheduled until 1040pm (our plane was supposed to leave at 544pm EST). Sighs. We hoofed it to Iron Chef Mike Symon's restaurant and got a seat and they closed the place around us.
The commented that they were there to serve and we didn't need to rush so we ate our fill (burgers and salad and beer) and then they asked if we wanted "BEER TO GO!". We said yes please. So drinking our beers we walked down the concourse to where everyone was gathered. All of teh babies were happy and getting into jammies so cute! We all shuffled on to our flight at just after 10 pm and we were in the air. Now the nice thing about flying over the continent is that we got an Airbus which had plug ins for phones and had inflight entertainment with ALL OF THE MARVEL MOVIES!!! So I snuggled in for Winter Soldier and then almost all of the way through Black Panther. I dozed in and out of the movies and was glad when we touched down in Phoenix 4 hours later. It was 1145pm and we all exited and Ari and I hit the bathroom before attempting to exit the terminal. I say attempting since we couldn't since the Phoenix Police had it cordoned off. Research later showed me nothing but something happened and we all had to stand around for about 20 minutes (passengers and airport employees and all) before they got buses routed to take us to baggage claim. We all trudged back to the opposite end of the terminal, exited onto the tarmac and then off to buses that we were packed in as sardines. Then finally around to the baggage claim where airport/airline personnel were watching the luggage that had been sitting there for over an hour. We finally get our bags and meet Sir Cathal on the curb at 115am. Get to his house, transfer luggage to Ari's car and get the heck out of Phoenix. I got home a bit after 3ish and then into bed by 330am. UGH.
Pictures from the event:
To say that was the end of my "exciting times" for the week would be an understatement. I slept and was groggy Monday and couldn't work from home since key hardware pieces were still at work or locked in my car which was with DH at his location. Without said key hardware I really couldn't show up at DH's plantsite to get my stuff. Sighs. So I did laundry, put things away, picked up the little boy from camp, made dinner and rested. The whole day to myself was actually good cause being Queen Ian'ka for 3 days straight without a lot of being not Queen was good.
The rest of the week was a scramble and then we had a supplier issue that ground my work to a halt for 12 hours of work time. This was a major issue and well, there are consequences for our supplier and now we have more procedures to handle things that the supplier was well versed in to start with. To add to that we had other major issues (failing hardware) and my deputy was gone and that left me and our new guy. Sighs. Plus, I had to deal with a guy who does everything in his power to not do his job and having to deal with that which is also a hot issue I was totatly crispy by the time Friday rolled around. I was so fragile it took effort to get out of my car in the parking lot and mentally I was panicking. But good people and awesome coworkers and everything worked out okay. I got hugs from a few folks and honestly that helped.
So Friday we took things easy, I got a 1.5 hour massage and that did more awesome for my mood. Saturday we got up, got going and out the door by 9am to get to Twin Moons Investiture. The day was great. We had a really good time. The courts were a bit long (not ours) but the awards were good from the Barony. Just before we invested the new B&B we had some fun with a peerage offer. Ivan handled it and we called up Iona and he talked about her hospitality and how even if we didn't have a ME dance community, she'd make one and be successful at it. He commented that "and this is peerlike." The audience gasped and our herald called forth the Laurels and she was clueless for about 30 seconds and then the light bulb hit. It was awesome. The rest of the investiture court was good. The funniest two things were a rap ala Vanilla Ice for the final lead in for the stepping down folks and the new Baroness who is a metal caster giving her Largess Coordinators a pair of cast bronze "LARGE "S"'s. I'm still cracking up on that pun.
We got out of site with plenty of time since there was a hard deadline of 5pm and we had dinner at Uncle Bear Brewing and then home. We were home in less than 12 hours which never happens. YAY!
Sunday I felt like crap and read/slept most of the day. Benton and I let Mel sleep in and got him coffee and his father's day stuff. Then he made us waffles but yeah, most of the day I was meh. I got my armor all conditioned up for Tuesday and then Monday night we had to build a new leg piece.
Monday was weird at work and I'm still trying recover from all of the weird. I got such a bad headache I just went home, cleaned up the house for scribble (the boys had done a ton so it was my personal pickup and put away) and then mel and I worked on my leg armor.
Tuesday night after a very stressful day of work I left and got martial arts stuff for Benton (cup and pads), picked him up at martial arts and then home to dinner, change and get ready for fighter practice for the whole family. But we did it and off we went. I was nervous. I'm out of shape and much heavier than 15 months ago when I last put on armor but I did it. The new leg piece worked okay but I need to suspend it differently and I have and idea for that. Benton did okay as well and his armor needs some work but he's looking good. Got changes to make but I think we can manage. All good.